[xx-19] On Reasons DCS Is Not Your Friend

This is an exchange I had with an apparent big-wig at the agency (who I didn't realize who he was, oh no! ::eye roll::) that they want to have a special meeting with me to talk about our "core values" about. A law changed or new protocol for who we're paying to "service" our families is going to be implemented, and they encouraged questions about what a 15 minute primer video was telling us. My direct supervisor thought nothing of it and just said she hopes I don't lose my shit and go out on bad terms. Bold is me.

How much are we going to paying in "per diem" verses what we are paying in billable hours today?

That depends on several variables. The idea with Family Pres is that we’re moving to a more intensive approach to service delivery for these families to not only prevent removals when we can, but more quickly and efficiently move the case to closure and the family to life after DCS.

I know what the idea is, but I don't know to the degree it's an informed idea, and unfortunately this doesn't answer the question.

What happens to individual therapists or smaller outfits that DCS trusts and works with that might not have the ability to address every concern a family may have even while they are really good at doing what it is they are currently doing?

All of our community-based providers are still available for other case types. For IA’s and in-home CHINS cases, you will need to select one of the contracted Family Pres providers. For existing cases, they can continue with their current services but after June 1 the law requires us to utilize this new service.

So a case worker retains their small outlet, puts in a FPS person anyway, and that doesn't immediately conflict with one of the opening training slides that it's supposed to simplify a seemingly complicated process? I got feedback from a small therapist who said she would not even be able to bid to be allowed to be a vendor unless she hired an unsustainable amount of people to provide for services she currently doesn't.

How do you construct "better measure the impact" of each provider's work? Are there surveys? Are they self-reporting? Are we starting an auditing leg? What are we comparing their metrics to to denote that it is "better?"

We’ll be able to gather a number of different data points such as intensity, model effectiveness, etc. More importantly we’ll be able to see which providers are investing the time and resources in each case and track the outcomes of those cases (removal/closure/extension).

I don't understand this. What constitutes "intensity" and "model effectiveness?" I'm still confused as to what makes an FPS referral a better equipped to track what we're doing. Do they have better software? Training in data collection? We don't know already when we're removing, closing, or extending a case? If we can't open a case unless their is a substantiation of abuse or neglect, what is meant by a referral must be made to FPS in any in-home CHINS or IA even if there is not a substantiation?

If a case exists that is either a in-home CHINS or IA, a FPS referral is required to be issued according to the new law.

​I understand there is a new law. I think the slide was confused in its phrasing, because a case is predicated on a substantiation. Unless the law has changed something to do with the circumstances and an FPS referral is to be put in anyway.

How do we ensure providers are documenting their evidence-based model any better than we currently are? Is there a roadmap for each model that we can follow along? Is it predicated on individual perception of progress or perhaps family testimony?

Central Office will help monitor the delivery of EBM’s through regular audits but providers are also required to document required fidelity measures in their monthly report as well as maintaining their certifications to provide those models with the model owners themselves.

This is the "who," but not the "how." The company I was working for was required to document as well, and whatever they were documenting was not accurately reflecting what they provided. Them being pressed on how to justify their billing would have gone a long way to help families and kept money out of bilking hands.

Concrete assistance must be paid by the provider "when necessary" like a heat bill in the winter to prevent removal. Who's determining when it is necessary?

You, your supervisor and the Family Team.

The video says the team decides, otherwise a removal would be necessary. If the provider controls the purse, is it hard to imagine they'll get creative in arguing for how the child doesn't need removed? How does this not incentivize providers to hang on to cash by insisting families move, access shelters, or under and falsely report?

Many of our partner agencies have long-standing relationships with the State and for their agencies to remain solvent, most wish to continue those relationships. Again, we will be able track a variety of data points, including when and how concrete assistance is being utilized.

Why would DCS cede that decision making process with the allocation of funds for families they likely have more familiarity and history with and no financial incentive to downplay?

If you or your supervisor identify a need that requires the use of concrete assistance funds, it is the expectation that (within reason) would occur. You are still the manager of the case and if you run into concerns like these, please report them to me immediately.

I suppose the practical reality of this will play out one way or another. Some of our long-standing agencies do a consistently "meh" to "terrible" job as it is and still get paid. I don't know what they've done, nor gather from the collective coworker conscience that they deserve even more money.

A good portion of this video describes our job. If we're asking providers to identify safety concerns more comprehensively than we are currently, and to call the hotline if they are unable to get a hold of someone at the office, are we not just adding an unnecessary barrier to addressing the concern ourselves and acting in a timely and organized manner with regard to our caseloads?

Well, we’re not. Providers understand their mandate and responsibility to report any concerns. If a safety concern is identified by the provider, they are required to report that immediately by phone. This does not necessarily mean that a new report will be generated, but rather the information was communicated to someone at the county immediately.

Why are we shifting the burden and removing the impetus to develop ongoing relationships with our families?

I’m unsure how you arrived at this conclusion.

If we're not understanding our mandate to ensure the safety of children, why are we believing providers are doing any better or trusting we have the capacity to recognize when they are doing so? As an assessor, the amount of new reports that get generated because we fumble around with pretty straight-forward means of accounting for what we already know does not give me reason to believe new reports won't get generated. I arrive at the conclusion that we are shifting the burden because instead of paying case managers to case manage, it sounds like we're mandating fledgling to tolerable service providers get paid more to do what were explicit descriptions of my/our job.

Is there anything consolidating providers speaks to that could not be better accounted for by better organizing and distributing work loads at the individual county level?

I’m not really sure about you mean by this question, but one of the ideas behind Family Preservation is streamlining service delivery. We know from years of feedback from families that multiple providers increases confusion and duplication of those services. ​

Things I've proposed are the making of unannounced home visits by assessors with less on their active case load, the distribution of menial paperwork tasks to designated people, the auto-filling of paperwork ready to print, and concurrent database search-ability to free up hours that can be spent with families or traveling.

Ok

Feedback from families will tell you perfectly inadequate case managers were their favorite or that someone who worked tirelessly to keep a family together hates them and did a terrible job. If you're going to solicit feedback, you need to ensure that those families weren't just being handled by a disorganized case manager, aren't reporting from areas with a lack of services to begin with, aren't experiences a mental or practical barrier that would keep them communicating with those providers, and were being properly referred in the first place. If you're basing the idea of changing the law solely on "families thought this was confusing," that seems incredibly short in its analysis of why they may say that. My questions suggests that if you better train and equip case managers, by actually organizing what the expectations are, better oversight, and things we apparently can't take for granted and have lost even the conception of, you don't need to redirect money to someone else to do a worse job.

As someone who has filled out "monthly reports" as a visit supervisor, I can tell you I was encouraged to use catch-all language that suggested they had trained me to do this comprehensive level of engagement I was in no way trained to do. As well, it was never expected I should learn or ask how to get to the level required to properly address the needs, and I was reprimanded for raising my concern for our inadequate standards. We still contract with that agency, leading me to believe our oversight is exactly zero, yet we plan to shift the responsibility even further to service providers?

I’ve attached a helpful document that we utilize to help FCM’s understand what they should be seeing in monthly reports as well as what we should be including in our referrals to providers. It’s unfortunate that you have this perception, but I’m hopeful when you review monthly reports submitted to you on your cases that you are mindful that case plan goals are being addressed and examples of progress/lack there of are being documented.

I'm in assessment, I'm just relaying my first-hand, albeit anecdotal, knowledge of a company that bragged about its increasing access to drug-riddled families and their willingness to hire anyone to send into anyone’s home to collect.

Cases should be referred for 6 months, ensuring the provider a paycheck even if the family only needs 3 months of an I.A. or something as specific as a payment one month in times of crisis?

We will rely on our Child and Family Teams in concert of course with our partner agencies and relevant participants to be familiar enough with the clients and their progress to understand when decisions about the direction of each case need to be made.

It said 6 months was required. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. If that 6 month period conflicts with the wisdom of the team, who wins?

Parent enters detox, kid is with healthy grandma environment, but don't close the referral, because provider is now incentivized to tell grandma kid needs their lowest cost already hourly-budgeted service or some broad family planning and monitoring. As long as there's a kid anywhere at any level of DCS, I bet they're going to have an identified need, real or otherwise, that keeps the referral open, no?

I would point you to a few of the answers above. If partner agencies “game” the system that would negatively affect their ability to receive future referrals and contracts with the State.

In theory it would, but I don't know how it does currently, and I certainly don't know how it would when they squeeze out smaller outlets and we become dependent on them to an even further degree.

Make sure new kids are added to the referral, because who knows the kind of expensive baby-specific specialists it will need that the per diem needs to make sure it accounts for! Generational abuse means we can keep them on the hook for life!

I’m not sure this really needs a response, I would direct you to our Practice Model and your supervisor if concerns like this become an issue. I hope this is helpful!

I'm inferring the direction I've watched places like Centerstone go in handing out flyers with 36 different services they provide arranged like a bad power point, and when you drill down, they're lucky to have 2 therapists with availability that doesn't stretch 3 to 5 months out. Now, one of those 2 therapists is going to call themselves or certify themselves as also a specialist at something like "moms coping with treating a baby with withdrawal" and insist they need to be involved at their specialized rate.

[851] Exception To The Rule

You'll do well to take this blog with a grain of salt, then a few more grains of salt, and then a shot of tequila, because I'm an hour past a bottle of wine, and I don't drink regularly anymore.

The theme for this paragraph is insecurity. I think I've mostly lost a concept of this. I remember having no confidence in my looks. I still get indignant to condescension for sure. But, at bottom, I have such an overwhelming “fuck you” kind of impulse, I don't really care. When pressed, I will find my own way, do my own thing, or have you calling my mental gymnastics and poor attempt at accounting for your solid point about my being evidence I don't have a prayer.

Why, ever, would you listen to something I say? It's the same reason you have music you enjoy or lines in books. Some shit I said resonated. I am not “the truth” by virtue of the bravado or intensity by which I say something. If I say, “That goofy looking 5 bitch” you should know, by naked context, I'm probably being a cunt. How on Earth could you reasonably invest in my sentiment, emotionally or otherwise? If that kind of thing fucks you up, is the problem that I said it, (yeah, maybe, but) or that you haven't worked out what it's speaking to you in how you feel?

I can promise you, and I don't make promises lightly, I don't feel as bad as you. My feelings are reserved for things that matter to me. If you remove yourself from that space, well, fuck, what the fuck am I supposed to do about it? I'm invested in your mind, your contribution, your sense of self extremely independent of me or what you feel about me. Maybe this is hard to understand, but I'm not looking to play you like an instrument. I don't want the script of “what girls like” or “signs of a super best friend.”

I will not just fail you at doing this, but I will attack that you'd even want me to. You will never, I mean never, get along or feel comfortable with me, if you want me to treat you like anything but the exception to the rule. You are in my orbit, and I'm in yours. Call yourself an asteroid instead of a planet, and I'll send you off to wander space. (Like, legit, you can tell I'm still drunk).

I'm not an overtly feeling person (news?). I hate things. I have sentimental overflows of lovey-doviness when I'm tipsy. But, by and large, I'm just watching. I'm just thinking. My sentiments are a bad analysis of one idiot at any one point in time, maybe underfed, maybe tired, maybe with a chip on his shoulder. God help you if you've couched a sense of yourself in that. We are never closer than when my words are perhaps window dressing on your fantastic Christmas extravaganza. Don't take me more seriously than you take yourself, and maybe take yourself less seriously.

I feel like I need to write blogs like this intermittently because, while it's not lost on me, not everyone is really in on it, but people don't like me. They really, really, don't like me. And they don't like me for all of the easy things like my mouth and what it says, or throwaway sentiments regarding arrogance. But, the deep down reason to not like me is when I immediately recognize where you're vulnerable, and then attacking it. It's a legitimate reason to suspect a person should not be in your circle.

Maybe you don't like your look. Maybe you're inarticulate. Maybe you've had a series of real traumas and life-altering experiences. I'll find it. I'll poke it. I want you to break the power it has over you like I try to break, or have broken, the things that have fucked with me. I hated my mom, and now am ambivalent. I hate condescension, but I'm not getting fired over it. I had no confidence or can routinely joke about a receding hairline or a fat ass. Those are not the things on my mind if I turn on what I am and pursue what I want.

It's not hard for me to point out the obvious. Maybe it's obvious you're fat as fuck. You know you're fat as fuck. That's not interesting. That's not meaningful. If you linger on that, you're selling both of us short. But that's what people do. They say, “YOU SAID THE OBVIOUS!” and hate you. Or they wish you didn't notice. I have a habit of noticing. I have a habit of exploring the darkest implications. I have a habit of looking down on the mythology you create about doing so or why. I might create a place that couches your being into something I better understand or can work with that could be just as obvious to you if you let it.

I want the exceptions to the rule. I want the contrary evidence. I want the choice to dismiss the pain and the feelings and to do something better. I want it from myself, and therefore I want it from you. I have to regularly drag it out of myself in writing and throwing myself at things which I find difficult and frequently hurt me. Whatever you do to do the same I hope is less dramatic, but no less required. I won't suffer you thinking less of yourself than I think of myself. I regard myself for the reasons I write about and for the things I create and work on. Think or say anything you want about my place in life, if it's shit, you'll get the standard “fuck you” and I'll continue doing my thing. Grant yourself the same capacity.

[850] Still Unwritten

Good help is hard to find, they say. It's a common enough theme to permeate every industry. I don't know if you've searched for a job lately, but you'd be amazed how many require you to show up on time, reliably keep track of what it is you're in charge of, or communicate. There's only so much by way of labor that is capable, responsible, or remotely accountable. The way society makes up for this leaves us with reason to be concerned.

Say there are too few doctors. What do you do? If it's your job to “find more doctors” the solution becomes an extension of your most fantastic marketing scheme. If you're a little more holistic, you might bother to advocate for people eating better and exercising more. If you're looking for a shortcut, maybe you start to understand the function of a doctor in a broader way, and allow for those functions to get couched under doctor-adjacent titles or through newly-minted certification processes. If you were the Big Box Store of doctors, you'd hire everyone that came in, call them doctor, fire the ones who kill, not merely maim, the patients, and keep a flood of bodies coming in to meet the demands of being big.

I'm all over the place in the last few days. I thought I was going to start a new job that doesn't appear to be panning out. I'm figuring out how best to time my leaving of my current one. I'm ruminating on the daily failures. I'm making cheeky appeals to Craigslist gig-makers and psychologically preparing myself for the idea of not having a consistent paycheck; it's a place I used to sort of revel in that now feels foreign.

I think about what I contribute to my jobs, and thus life in general. I think about the things I've done for which I got no reward. I think about the perspective I've garnered that made me more or less capable. I think about the standard I try to maintain in my work and how that gets interrupted when I'm overwhelmed by an environment that's comfortable sleeping in shit-filled beds. I think about how I have literally never lived nor worked in an environment that runs by even half of the examples I've set that would constitute “working hard” or “being responsible.”

The only place in which who I am or what I stand for seems to exist is right here. I write about it. I live on the land “it would be so cool to have!” in those empty conversations from years ago. I've escaped the statistic where half or more of my money is going to rent. I can account for a $400 emergency. I build on the foundation that is vitally important to understand, preserve, and defend. My attitude and sense of morality is embodied in my work ethic and how I prioritize my time.

I've never wanted to be a doctor. I don't like people. The more I learn about people, I like them even less. I don't like that they have the world and pretend otherwise. I don't like that they talk out of their ass. I don't like that they let children get raped because they're too busy covering their own ass or holding a meeting about nothing or the 4 reworded words on a policy no one reads nor conforms to. (I can't make this shit up.) The truth about me being a doctor would have everything to do with my ego regarding my intelligence, not that I just care so much and want to help.

I genuinely believe it's a foreign concept to people to admit that to themselves. Most things you don't want to be or do. Most people you don't care about. Most things you spend your time on have absolutely nothing to do with who you “really” are or how you orient yourself in the world. We're victims of circumstance to a heavy degree, and we eek out seeds of joy in a forest of bullshit. That's not the interesting or worthwhile thing to keep pointing out. In fact, it's the cliché for people who smoke, eat, or drink too much.

Once you admit you don't give a shit, you can start to explore, or even just see if not barely recognize, what you do care about. Your world begins to change, not unlike the things people say when their child is born. (And guess what, they say all those bullshit sentiments, and proceed to fail miserably.) The failure is not the point or the interesting thing. The initial epiphany, moment of honesty, is. There are things that are significantly vulnerable, more vulnerable than you, that are worthy of protecting. You have the power to not just enable the creation of sensitive and worthwhile things, but the obligation to protect them. If you are not worthy of this task, it's a degree of catastrophe there aren't enough words for, and the likelihood of death becomes incredibly high.

I was regarded as a “perfectionist” the other day. I've never called myself as such, and I think the organized chaos of my living environments or approach to a dozen projects would refute it. At the same time, I think that sense of order that I'm after is probably what the observer was picking up. If I want someone fired for lying on paperwork that besmirches a child-mother as a drug user, when she's a victim, is that “perfect” of me? If I have a few different avenues I think a space may evolve into, and attempt to organize an initial idea to account for those, it's not that my idea for the space is perfect, it's that there are variables that feel more or less pertinent to the situation.

What's a perfect work environment? How do you codify something like that? Well, you start with that same epiphany that parent about to fail their newborn has. You recognize the responsibility, and you denote the veins required to work its arms. I don't care if you're building, cutting someone open, or being a paper pusher. The reason it's lost on the culture at large, and the reason I started this talking about how hard it is to find good help, is because we do not recognize our responsibility. We don't use our voices responsibly. We don't act right. We don't hold each other accountable. And we not-so-slowly chip away at our ability to recognize what's really at stake. In my job, it's the life of a child, and we fail miserably. I have to believe if we're willing to be this shitty, your clerk, office environment, or manual labor gig is as well.

The “look around” method of attempting to prove something isn't to be preferred, but is anyone paid what they're worth? Are we getting better at being civil online or recognizing when the news is actually a troll or propaganda? Are we bothering to measure or study or track...anything...besides the story of environmental decline? Are any of my 30 year old friends truly in that much more stable of a place than when they were 22? Have we started circulating billionaire money into better schools? Or, is Kanye West running for president? You know, to succeed Trump. How dangerous of a cartoon are you going to put up with living in?

I was reading old blogs and finding a sentiment that, whatever I'm doing with my time, it's going to arguably be better than having it get sucked away by those who have zero regard for my values or the changes I wish to see in the world. If I get smarter reading a book every day, so therefore the world gets smarter and maybe I can translate it into bigger consequences. My environment doesn't just fail to inspire confidence, it attacks my sense of self and being. Let's recall, me getting a “normal” job was me hitting rock bottom. I've been at my worst for at least 2 years, and have meagerly parlayed that into the floor I was hoping to establish years ago in having the basics on the land paid in advance. I need a different selection pressure and to better focus my funds and attention.

As long as your practical “I don't care” impulse is there, you need to maintain an angry vigilance and standard for whatever circles you occupy in life. Do I care about raped up children? Yes, in a removed sense that isn't the one doing the raping. But I work in the office that's supposed to prevent such things, and we actually help it happen, and no one gets fired, and then we set our eyes on someone else in danger and find a way to make their life worse. All the while we repeat how much we care and bemoan the stress, like you can just behave that way and not be the fat self-satisfied yet insecure power monger that constitutes the look and feel of my office. You holding standards where you are works its way into standards being held elsewhere. If you don't believe that, but can viscerally feel the impact of there being basically no standard, you're one more that the privileged few of us have to build into how we structure society.

I won't break. I'll bitch through hundreds of blogs, but I won't break. I will throw the truth in your face until the day I die. The truth is sticky. It's not true because I say it. It's true because it doesn't go away. It's true because the consequences exist independent of our feelings or opinions. It's true because you think about it when you don't want to and your response to it isn't accountable or sacrificial enough. I need to sacrifice the “security” of this paycheck and find new people to talk to, industries to explore, or just ways to use my time that I've been neglecting. I need to find the path forward, always, because what's in place is broken and does not care.

[849] Build Me Up, Buttercup

I'm gonna try to write in the morning, before my brain works, something I rarely do, but I don't yet want to be noisy.

Let's get the easy stuff said. I'm starting a new job. It's a bad idea. I'm only doing it so I can occupy as many of my waking hours with the pursuit of money. I tend to hover around $2000 in debt at a time. This is usually with another paycheck for $1200 coming in and mileage reimbursement in the wings. It's hard not to spend money on somethings that have saved me $600-$10,000 recently. I've found the utility of debt and the ability to see things like my new shed getting deconstructed and transported keep my thoughts from being occupied about all I can't yet do.

As far as bad ideas go, I feel like I'm trying to accelerate doing them while I still have the energy. I'm not “old,” but my body definitely is stiffer, I've managed to maintain a relatively consistent sleep schedule, and even with hours of massaging and stretching, there's a wobble to my knee and muscles all through my back that will provoke headaches. If I'm going to get tight and achy, I want it to be after I've cut the roof off a shed, dug a trench, or cranked a come-along all day removing saplings.

I'm incredibly tired of waiting. If I tried to parse out all of the “bad” decisions I've made that I had to account for before I got my own house in order, so to speak, it's time for the experiment and thrive portion. I paid off the tax debt. I got the essentials flowing, I've kept the bills incredibly low, and inch by inch I'm seeing the land morph into the playground it always could be. Even against the backdrop of my despotic fatalism about being alone and angry, I even found a partner! Increasingly, I already bought the right tool or toy and now my Amazon wishlist is things like a tetherball pole and baseball netting. Yesterday, Allie and I discussed where to stack the roof pieces so as not to get in the way, blissfully aware of the irony of the remaining 4.5 acres around us. Space is continually occupied by ideas for its future.

While I haven't fallen fully into “the next paycheck” trap, it's definitely a degree of comfort I don't want to get comfortable operating in. On balance, my job takes up an incredible amount of my time relative to what I get out of it. My bad-math estimation is that I'd have to do it for half as long at my current paid rate or to get paid at least one and a half times what I am for it to feel mildly worth it long term. The fact that I'm flirting with making $13 an hour instead of $21 plus mileage and overtime is a testament to how much they are willing to take advantage of you under the guise of presumed “passion” for other people's welfare. The best case manager or social worker you've ever met is getting fucked squarely, except maybe in Colorado.

Making less money and having a consistency to my schedule might allow me to focus on all of the “little” things. I ordered 10 books over my vacation and opened none of them. I have plenty more to go as far as prepping the ground underneath where we put the new shed. I've got 100+ tabs open of things to read and research. More money has psychologically given me more license to make what might be distracting end runs around things I should be barreling through. You know who you don't spend a day calling when you're broke? Building movers. I've eaten more Wendy's in the last few months than I have in the preceding 10 years.

As well, all of the “stuff” we're accumulating, the expanded space isn't quite set up yet, so it's getting a little tight. While there's a degree of normalcy now to trying to use the bathroom with a chainsaw or yard equipment between your legs, it's not ideal. And with any house, you're always prompted to do a series of small house-keeping tasks that perpetually manifest.

Tentatively, I'm planning to get the shed set up, finish out the bones of my earthen-floor extension experiment, and play with ways to turn my hole into a pool (that's what she said). A place to woodwork/prep out of the rain would be super swell. Content in the knowledge that I had enough money to get by, pay in advance, and everything on-site to do half a dozen things at once without going into debt would be even better. I need to pick an angsty blog from February or April to remind myself that “slow” for me is lightspeed with regard to normal. I envy billionaire efficiency though.

I'm trying to think of things as a puzzle more than as a series of burdens. I'm searching for the right fit, not aimlessly at the mercy of the mess in front of me as I wait for it to assemble itself. As a function of the poorly accounted for structure I've been bred from, I plugged myself into places that aren't quite right that stabilized a certain structure and painted some kind of picture that wasn't depicted on the box. How to safely deconstruct and reconstitute is the figurative and literal project.

[848] So Close To Scoring

I've finished two thought-provoking books in the last week that I want to riff on.

The first, The Body Keeps The Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, is basically the pinnacle of what you ever could know about our current understanding of trauma and how to treat it. The second, Can't Hurt Me, Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds, by David Goggins is one man's story of overwhelming amounts of trauma both inflicted upon and self-inflicted.

Goggins' book I like because it transported me back to the obsessive focused place I was in when I decided I was an “entrepreneur” and had to “simply do” whatever was in front of me to get to the end. It didn't matter if it was ten or two hundred phone calls. It didn't matter if it was early or late. It didn't matter if I didn't have the money or got hurt. Goggins ridicules the word “motivated,” which I understand. I wasn't motivated. I was convinced. I knew the end and what it had to look like.

Living like that is analogous to the faithful. It's an irrational endless push towards an end that is hardly as defined as you'd like to claim. It's the infinite well of justification. It's a pious position on top of your hill. And, as physically manifested in Goggins, it will eventually knot you up until you die. It's an invigorating and intoxicating drug and mythical place where your goal is the only goal. If you occupy it, you are practically guaranteed success. The catch is the narrow definition of that success and a craving for your next fixation.

I appreciate how Goggins discusses things in intimately personal terms. He's talking about his literal psychosis and uses the verbiage that works for him. He doesn't want you to become a Navy Seal or beat the shit out of your body. He wants you to understand that there literally is no excuse and the fear or laziness that permeate all of the little things will run you if you don't run yourself. You have to orient yourself to what is difficult. You have to sacrifice comfort. You have to organize around the things that speak to your deepest insecurities and honest desires. When he was on the verge of death, he felt at peace reflecting on what he had achieved and why. We should all be so lucky.

I think recognizing that capacity in yourself is important. I don't think you need to be cranked up to 11 at all times. I don't think you need to destroy your body and relationships. I don't think that even were you to achieve world domination, it matters much if you were in a blacked-out haze awoken only by the license you give yourself to describe your position at the “top.” I grew more zen about the idea of being “better than everyone.” I can be me. I can't be you. You, absolutely, have important things vitally important to me being the best me. That calloused mind place about you and your effort alone has no room for other people.

Modernity is born of countless calloused minds. Before we could flirt with horrid ideas like “safe spaces,” every single one of us knew there was no such thing, and we knew it because the death and pain and struggle of survival was playing out in real time. Arguably, a huge portion of impoverished or targeted groups kept that “real” spirit alive, while the comfortable and entitled among us pretended the world ebbed and flowed with our first-world posture. For those not markedly defined by, or interested in getting a handle on early trauma, the rest of the world is going to look like a very foreign and hostile place.

That's what we are. We are traumatized by life itself. There are many languages to describe it. There are a dozen schools of thought currently competing on the best ways to treat it. And, frankly, we're babies who've just babbled out the concept of trauma, and are struggling to translate its true consequences.

Just like you can only know the conversation you're having with yourself, the varying kinds of trauma and how or who it hits are infinitely complex. As such, when people tell you to de-escalate, be kind, or otherwise find the “love” for your neighbor that you might for your dog if not yourself, it's an appeal to actually learning what it is you or they are mad at or hurt about. I might be able to reliably predict a handful of pathological behaviors or conditions associated with certain kinds of trauma, but that doesn't mean I appreciate the holistic environment that would lend itself to healing or preventing further damage.

This is where we wade into the undulations of culture wars. We disregard the trauma of being raised Black in The United States. We eventually get the violent disregard thrown back in our face. Ironically, even when it isn't violent, we're fascinated with those who are, almost as if a guilty conscience is trying to keep everyone on the same stupid playing field desperately justifying.

I've had the thought that as the world seems to be burning down in a more countable and palpable fashion than all of the “war-on” rhetoric could ever convince me of, I feel more stable. I don't know what to make of this. It's almost like the turmoil around me is giving me a chance to prove that the way I've attempted to organize my life is proving vital and important. When the world shuts down, where are you living? When the food goes bad, what can you grow? Where the streets are filled with violence, what's the refuge? When you're feeling stifled and looking for a way to express or create, do you have the money, time, room, help, or visible reminders that you're making progress? I used to stare out of my security cameras and see a dirty block path in overgrown weeds. Now I see a driveway, airstream, and recently laid out floor for a home extension.

I regard my place in life as less a description of “progress” though, and more a vibing on a personal theme. My anxiety about ever experiencing peace and comfort notwithstanding. I have a level of person I desire as company. I have a nature of conversation I prefer over others. I have an assumption of work in service to a kind of life I want for myself and others. I've said several times over years, I'm already at the top. I was at the top when I had all of my time during drug study life. I was at the top being able to drink and whore around in college. Hell, I was at the top having a Mini Cooper in high school and in every instant that resembles when I heard on the marching band field “Everyone play this next section but Nick!” because I was loud and clean and setting the bar. I was less interested in how to get everyone to my level, but I was also 16.

I try to walk the line of comfort and appreciation for where I'm at, while throwing myself into the next challenge. Tomorrow, I have to start deconstructing a shed I got a killer deal on. It'll be hot, dangerous enough, a bit of a drive, and involve problem solving I hope matches the tear-down I did for my shed-turned-bathroom. Then I get to remember that with one primary tool, an almost perfectly inept and dramatic stranger, and two days, we got that shed moved the same distance. Oh ya, I can say to myself, it's been worse and also confusing or complicated, and I got a bathroom out of it.

I don't know what the analogous road is for you, mostly because I never really hear people's desires anymore after they've been self-shamed into complacency. The forever-point will be that you can literally start today. I always need help and want to enable you. It will not necessarily be easy. It won't happen overnight. What I gather from the most prevalent story though is that it isn't going to happen at all. I hope things like protests and pressure and the anger and resentment that drove/drive me make their way into the story of why you're operating the way you are in any one moment. You don't need to be irrationally faithful to hold yourself accountable, speak honestly, learn where to fit, or turn and face a fear.

My “fears” for lack of a better term are as straight-forward so to be rendered pointless (like, not wishing to be sick or hurt) or abstract enough I struggle to know where to begin a description. I fear “not proving.” And to be sure, I mean to myself. More than afraid though, I'm curious. I'm obsessed. I'm convinced. The fear is missing out on the game. I've got FOMO for my own life. The intellectual part of me knows it's going to take years, the experimentation, and learning how to fill in where I fuck up, but I can imagine tackling the “better problems” of having “more fundamental” pieces to my envisioned future. How many “if only I had!....” sentiments can your mind ring out when you've already been given the world?

That's where I probe for peace in the infinite now. I already have all the pieces. I'm living in the future. What I “really” want is probably something simple, like to pour concrete and see the wood and dirt look a little different. I want to ease the stress and drama for those I care about and share memories and food (or be willing to buy you more food as I don't really like to share food). I want the “mildly-drunk Nick P.” sensation to rule most of my moments and remain open and flexible and challenged to creatively solve before mindlessly venting. I want to perceive the changes in service to feeling better or living, and amplify them. And when the memory or violence of trauma can be utilized, viciously defend my creation.

But right now, the vast majority of my nows, are very good if not for a great many others. I hope I can be part of translating and building a perpetual better now.

[847] Chains

I am not free. It's an excruciatingly obvious thing to state. I am bound by some mess of internal moralism, physical limitations, and every practical reality of my setting known and unknown.

Freedom, for as often as it is invoked, is extremely complicated. The naive wish to “be free” summarily dismisses the negative consequences. If you want the freedom to be an asshole, you are free to take a punch. Interpersonally it's easier to understand, adding to the irony when you hear a young person on the beach during a pandemic say “fuck em.”

I'm thinking about freedom right now because I don't feel free to enjoy my last night of vacation. Tomorrow, I'm back to using the vast majority of my time and brain space mitigating poor, ignorant, and stressed out people's problems with the handful of meager tools allotted to me. I get to dream about figuring out a way to automate Word forms to exponentially increase my time doing even more sideways and fundamentally inadequate ways to be a part of the system. I get to wake up earlier than my body positively responds to to field questions like, “Are you happy to be back?” yuck yuck.

While I was “free” this last two weeks, I read exactly 0 books after ordering 10 from Amazon. I got my concrete pillars installed this evening, finding one reason or other besides the weather to prevent me from doing so sooner. I played no video games if you consider Rockband actual guitar practice, and while I'm not filled with absolute dread at the idea of returning, I know I'm going to be working very hard to play into my “take over this organization” vibe so I stay out of the realm screaming “none of this matters and isn't helping.”

The kind of freedom I desire I don't think I've ever had. When I had money in the bank, I didn't have land. I have land, but still bills. The projects I add to my plate are supposed to be in the name of fun and experimentation, and let me tell you, it takes doing it, stepping back, and reflecting on what you're desperate to forget how hard it was to learn, before that fun and experimentation feels like a wise decision. My time this last two weeks has been about finding a resting point and continued escape from thinking about work. It wasn't about enjoying what I had, it was about running from what's coming.

I don't feel bad insofar as I got caught up on a ton of shows and actually did accomplish a fair amount of pretty strenuous work. If anything, starting vacation having provoked myself into the takeover mindset probably set me up to “fail” at vacation regardless. I'm returning to a field that is still far and away the easiest thing I've ever done for money. I, occasionally, actually help people and provide a reasonable and calm tone with good information to a situation that, even after dealing with us, never managed to find its way. The work matters, but still not to me, or at least not yet.

I'm exhausted and invigorated by the work I did today. I look properly Peruvian with the amount of sun I've gotten. I go to Lowes almost every day. We actively discuss the dozen things we want to create every day. The reality of a consistent paycheck keeps sounding the alarm. The “practical” fact that insurance, and debt, and health matter bookend every consideration. My model is still built around money. I still have not separated my physical presence and engagement from my ability to collect. I don't want to lazily invite anyone to park and rent, but freedom to waste as much time on a video game or getting really good at clean picking technique does not happen until I don't have the harbinger of “labor for someone else” hanging over me. Not labor, just for someone who doesn't care, who will never care, how efficiently or smart I can be.

How do I get to prove it to myself? Taking over DCS would hint at it. These home improvements are reminiscent of the efforts it took to get the coffee shop going. Sooner than we both think I'll be making statements like, “Oh, you can't build a home extension in a week? All you have to do...” I spend a lot of time thinking about the under-considered expenses and investments of time before I run headlong into things, but there is something invigorating about making a snap decision and drilling down until it's done. For all of the effort it's taken to organize these free books for Amazon, I didn't spent my break listing them. I suspect it's an almost impossible to profit endeavor. I'll truly be “free” when I think it's a good idea to knock something like that out.

I really think I'm going to have to be obnoxious in my takeover. I need the thing above the thing to focus on, like an overwhelming desire to embarrass or shame and spite impulse. You think I'm trying to make things “better,” while I chuckle and go “No, I legit just hate you that much.”

I'd be remiss if I didn't at least nod my head to the idea of how haughty this whole sentiment and blog might come across in the midst of what will hopefully be a cultural shift in ensuring Black Lives Matter. I want to live freer of obligations and search for “fulfillment,” and black people would like to get around to being allowed to live at all. This isn't lost on me.

Maybe I need to explore why just saving enough to last a year or two wouldn't work either. I genuinely want to say my bills are paid for a year. There is little reason, it seems, to do so. They can get their money when they bill me. But, the act of billing me is nagging perhaps? Like, fuck your monopoly. Fuck it taking 5 days to process. Fuck me for not being off-grid yet. What would I do with a year of vacation that I didn't do in two weeks? Property taxes aren't exactly rent, but they are due just like any bill, and can't be paid in advance. Of course there are a dozen things I want right now that are also $1000+ and interrupt the thought, and I'm definitely paying off credit card purchases in service to all the new tools and toys instead of car payments. Why bother sending my internet company $1,287?

I think I still desire to be the kind of person who can, and say that he did, because I know people aren't. It's the pretension. Who pays their bills for a year? Hood-rich people? Mind you, I could throw it on the credit card too, and still use the cash from a paycheck to do whatever. I want more indications of my fought for status. I want people to appreciate the organization and time spent in service to statements like that. I want them to want that for themselves so maybe they'd free up their time and help me make even bigger statements.

We can circle right back around. Saving time to have it to do with what you please. Allowing your brain the time to think about anything besides the next obligation. I fill the void with at least consistent acknowledgment that I'm surrounded by books I haven't read and instruments I haven't learned. I still look forward to being a trumpet student and feeling comfortable spending the grand it would take to re-pad the tenor saxophone. I suppose I don't understand how that isn't your goal if you “want to live.”

If and when you actually have a goal, which I struggle to believe about most people, you don't get it usually without the focus and time and struggle for something just beyond your reach. If you've vocalized it at all, and it's something like “ I want to learn to dance!” and you're not taking dance classes, clearly it's speaking to something deeper. The collective goal-orientation of Black Lives Matter is encouraging, but does it have the habit of achievement or the incidental luck of the country being on lock down so the protests look super cool?

I've watched most people with stated-ish goals do exactly the things that would obligate them to their version of The State kind of environment. The paychecks allows for higher-end feasts to tear through more voraciously than any day-in-the-life otherwise, but was the goal fancy dinner? I think this shit is incredibly important to talk out too. I don't begrudge someone having less than the whole “take over the world” kind of language I employ, but is it unreasonable to point out that taking over the world involves the exact same skills and perspective required to even get a handle on your own life or social circle? How do you get the time without being more efficient? Where do you grow without connecting with those with knowledge that compliments yours? What heights can you climb without sacrificing a series of common comforts?

We all get to die and be free from daunting praise or harsh criticism. In the meantime, we're not even free to feel good about things that are good because a large enough portion of how our lives are organized is catastrophically bad. What do you think it really takes to address that situation without habitually taking on more and more responsibility and intending to dominate it?

[846] Vroom Vroom

There are several mini topics that I mostly just want out for posterity. Let's get organized.

I start back at work on Monday. Another one of my hasty schemes, maybe starting a moving/salvaging operation, was foiled by a lack of information regarding the severity of the damage to the truck I planned to use. Also, the world closed down, and every rural get-by person is collecting scrap and pallets, so I suspect there's more competition than you'll find accurately measured in online researching. I applied to one job, of course that I don't want, but that I trick myself into believing might be a good thing after I fantasize for five minutes. I got an immediate rejection which I then used to elevate my indignation for the dismissive, inadequate, and condescending place I believe most “managers” are coming from. I vowed to give my future applicants the courtesy of at least 5 minute conversations if they were timely, polite, and provided an extended context of their competences.

As long as I'm still working at DCS, I'm plotting to take over DCS. I'm planning to do so by being overwhelming in the amount of work I put in, and reformulating the flow of information and task-management through something that cannot be denied without severe repercussions. I currently do the work of at least 5 people, and I'll be shooting for 25-30. I won't be claiming undue or exorbitant overtime. I plan to collect data in a way the State is unwilling or unable to do so. I'm going to try incredibly hard to keep the generally broad and all-encompassing task balanced against my otherwise cush circumstances and continued work to escape the gravity of the normal world. On vacation I've managed to field 2 phone conversations related to work that I feel aggrieved by, but remind me that the integration of the task and my life is going to be thorough and I need to be very zen about how I conceive of it.

I was talking earlier about drive and what all there is left to achieve. It's a cliché to mention that after you achieve something, what comes next is the new series of plagued thoughts. I read old blogs wishing desperately to be able to shower and shit in my own home, wash my clothes, and walk on something besides a tick paradise. The idea of who you really are underneath and what you could really stand for does a lot of work in destroying your ability to appreciate right now. As a function of getting a paycheck consistently, I think about the next thing to buy, not how amazing what I just got really is or how much time I could spend appreciating it. This is a bad habit. What's important to maintain is the willingness and desire to move “forward” significantly more than retain guilt that right now you're doing pretty good.

This got me thinking about the singular focus I've exhibited from learning about religion, to creating and running the coffee shop, to making my home an appreciably comfortable spot, one hand-mopping session of drywall dust and violent curse for insects at a time. My goal of “taking over the world” is severely hindered by how much I enjoy my present company. This is a good thing. As much as I want an engine for change and accountability on my terms, I want to enjoy building it, talk intelligently about how to get there, and keep the nature of sacrifice out of the realm of martyrdom. That I've used the good majority of my time off to simply not think about working for DCS verses things like reading, playing video games, or even building reminds me how much I like to do what I want to do when I want to do it. I need to make a mantra out of “I'm not actually that hindered by money.”

I helped spread and pour concrete and put together a deck on a hot day, and it was more fulfilling than my last several months at work. If I don't find a way to make it mine, whatever the task, it becomes insufferable. If I can't put it in my context, hotly negotiated and bulging at the seems, it doesn't matter what it is or how hard or easy it is assumed to be, I cannot carry on without withering. I want to be exhausted in service to things, but not stupidly. I don't want to be pinched until I pop, make excuses so that I no longer appreciate the meaning of words, nor pine and moan as though I'm not fundamentally a radical force capable of radical decisions. I can always give or take.

This makes me think of the protests. I want them bigger. I want them meaner. I want them smarter and to be of consequence in a way I believe we're broadly still too dumb to know how to do. I want the power taken, because it will not cede on its own. If I only fussed and wrote signs and witty facebook posts until my blue face scared the cows away from home, I wouldn't be voting for a better sheriff. If I wanted others to appreciate the different eras of protest and revolution, I might provide free text for people to learn what's gone right or wrong. A fuck ton of people rallied in Bloomington, just like every other integrated civilized place for something the vast majority want and can absolutely get. Do we wait until peaceful protesters are getting gunned down en masse by shadow private armies?

Context, big and small, must be persistently navigated. I wish to change the world by getting a firmer and firmer grasp on my small corner of it; whether it's my head, the exercise of my time, or the goals I attempt to adopt within the confines of my jobs or hobbies. Right now, my context, so often tightly focused on “me” and “my budget,” innocently enough didn't cut my yearly bill obligation in half now that it's being split. One paycheck now equals about 6 months of security. Do I still have to work 4 months if I want contacts, insurance, a gym membership, and to overpay for tires or car repairs? Sure. But I can survive on Ramen, books, and keep the lights on for 6 months every 2 weeks. The options to explore remain open, the trend line is in the right direction, and no matter how insufferable any given day may appear things are about as objectively good as I can account for without adequate health insurance.

What's next with more help or organization? Who's in the quarter of an acre next to us helping pull saplings, stashing away their cash, and realizing that $50 just bought them a month of time they'll never get back? Whether it's the self-actualization and incidental ego-stripping that hopefully comes with working, growing, and increased perspective and connections, the question is whether or not we're going to figure out how important it is to focus NOW on the things we should have been doing 10, 20, or 200 years ago. A revolution can return you to exactly where you are if you don't keep control of the wheel.

[845] Chat Attack!

When it comes to communicating, seemingly, there are no rules. This is not the same thing as saying there aren't physical limitations, tendencies that appear across languages, or shared history and similarities. What it means is that there are no guarantees that what was invented in order to communicate isn’t as incidental to the time and place as anything. The intentionality doesn't matter, and the verbs and nouns imprecise. The fact that this is written in English is almost perfectly for arbitrary reasons that you could list indefinitely. What I put into it, for all of its words, will be what I get out of it emotionally, psychologically, or what you can take away from it in your own organization of messy and incomplete understandings of yourself.

Communication at all is a miracle. To be understood is divine. I heard some quote somewhere that equated “true love” to being understood. Don't we have myriad depictions of what we consider perfect love stories and couples who seem to “get it?” There's a world of built-in implications and expectations that, for different people at different times in life may or may not be reasonable or realistic. I say I often relate to the old women who've been through a few husbands. There's a broad attached/detachment and joy you try to bring into the moment and your partner, and a lot of pre-sifting when it comes to things you're going to bother worth considering a problem.

I've written nearly 850 blogs. If we averaged an hour per blog to write them, you get about 35 days worth of crawling around my head and attempting to find where I'm at. There is no consistent theme to them. I'm just in the moment, the words springing up as though they were there all along. Often enough I get done writing and a headache will go away, or my heart will slow down, or my stomach will quiet. I didn't know what I needed to say in order for those things to happen. I don't know even that I needed to say anything particularly specific, but I needed to talk. I needed to anchor. Right or wrong, achievement unlocked, special badge for “clarity” or “calm.”

I don't know that I ever expect to be understood. I reiterate how important a single line in a movie or song can be and how it can resonate. Stream-of-conscious doesn't mean automatic coherence. My deepest moralizing or good-will might soak the page until it drips helplessly at your feet while you don a befuddled look at “what I was trying to do.” I write and analyze the ride. I deconstruct where I think a hiccup in thought or how I'm relating to people or the world took place. I certainly don't trust that what I'm saying is perfectly clear or unable to be misinterpreted, and it's why I offer the only thing that can remain constant, honesty to the moment.

I realize now that for most of the stress in my life it came from an inability to inhabit the present moment. Often enough, my present moment is very frustrating. Or, I haven't taken a hold of it to decide that it doesn't need to be that way. When you discuss past trauma and it manifesting in a dozen ways throughout your adult life, predisposing you to health issues, mental problems, and attachment difficulties, it's because your current brain is still traumatized. Who wants that to be their present moment? Or consider someone on the verge of relapsing. Work they've done to stay sober didn't “fix” their brain. They didn't communicate the severity of the consequences to a brain that's in disrepair. It needs tools and an environment to distract and build upon.

My community dwindled, my prospects zeroed into a work life I'm not crazy about, a remote living environment, and a habit of semi-compulsively watching, reading, or dreading the moment the awareness of how good it might be feeling is going to go away. So I anchor and continue to explore. So I talk to myself, because I don't think your brain needs the entirety of mine to cope with as well.

I don't consider it a bad thing to be misunderstood, but an opportunity to find shared language. It can also be the line you come up to and realize you don't want to cross. I know what my boundaries for acceptable communication are. I know the difference between processing and flailing, and even if they might both need to be engaged in sometimes, I'm not going to contribute unless we're going somewhere. My experience “debating” religious ideologues prepared me for the futility of honest exchange arrested by ideology. We don't assume we're under our own spell of assumptions though. It's easy to point at religion or fascism and see the deadly consequences, smug looks, and broad scary cringe. You, though? No no, you're reasonable. You're being as clear and specific as possible. You can be held harmless. You don't even raise your voice.

I know that I have my own superimposed mythology to cope with life and my place in it along with everyone else. I try to formulate that mythology one line at a time. I try to recognize when I think I'm getting something right, count the times I'm getting it wrong, and weigh actual values of engagement and achievement. I try to read old blogs to see if I'm keeping a common thread of progress towards stated goals. I try to remember the frustrations of my present moment that existed back then and that I might still be carrying. It's an incredible amount of work that you can start to take for granted if you forget where you've been or built better habits over time. I still suspect somewhere in my life I'll rock a solid body that starts to feel “normal” too, and forget I didn't “just go to the gym” or “just eat better.”

One of the biggest disappointments I have with regard to my old friend group was the inability or unwillingness to relay the actual problem at the time. This building resentment grew until everyone felt the time to air grievances and disassociate could be relegated to facebook chats and comments. This prompted people to pile on after a rape allegation. So far, one person has apologized for “how that all played out” and recognized the unfair and impossible circumstances that were created. Does it take away my responsibility to try and understand where people were coming from or how I contributed to how they felt? Absolutely not. Is it fair to expect me to change for the better, acknowledge and respect where they're coming from, or feel particularly responsible when I'm not given the same chance to be understood or respected? Absolutely not.

As such, I can understand about myself that I'm willing to be continually misunderstood. I'm willing to maintain an open disposition and discuss anything, but it's going to come with conditions of specificity and measurable metrics for success. I write until I'm done, therefore successful. If you need to talk just so someone will listen, I'm down. If we need to talk to come to an agreement on chores or expenses or whether a party can be held without things getting out of hand, I'm there. If we need to closely examine physical boundaries and how we speak to each other or hit on each other, sign me up. Never will it be acceptable though to attempt any or all of those with your mind already made up about who I am, who you are, and the congeniality of your position over mine. We're probably both wrong and should figure out how.

And I suspect, once we get over the major hurdle of our assumptions and held-harmless positions, it'll be the littlest of things that need adjusted, and the work of doing so will contribute to built-in better habits. They have to be built, because again, there are no rules. They have to be reinforced and reintroduced. If you can find a better thing to apply an anxious or compulsive mind to, let me know.

[844] Give A Little Bit

I don't know that there's anything really on my mind, so I don't expect you to follow along. I've just read a few old blogs written a few years a part. I still occupy the vast majority of the space in which they were written. You might call this consistency or obsession.

I guess I'm in a good place? I have tangible, affordable, physical goals. I can go outside and dig holes to proper specifications and likely frame my home extension over my vacation. That's pretty cool. I have the money in the bank to pay for the parts and labor of my, hopefully drive-able now, moving truck. Also, way cool. I'm absolutely killing One Piece marathons, eating slightly better and saving a little money doing so. Despite all the craziness of the virus, I've remained healthy, I get paid hella bucks in mileage working from home, and it's been coming into focus the reality that, despite my “a paycheck is coming!” habit, I don't actually have to spend it all at once, and that “security” I've been pursuing to breath a little easier is here if I can stay out of the hardware store.

A lot of what has motivated me in life is based in anger. For the sake of brevity, I'll say I still “hate” everything, and wish to be in charge. I don't think people do enough in service to their language or purported morality. I don't think we're even remotely oriented towards a survivable and sustainable future, and I don't need to use out-dated Michael Moore statistics to think so. I think I want to use this likely brief period of “calm” in my disposition to own the future I continue to see coming. I'm forming tangible processes to build and replicate and hopefully get exponential. How does that money, time, and energy get directed?

I'm not that interested in digging in now, because the landscape is always changing. The plan can change with the rain. Maybe we get compounding disasters on top of what we're poorly holding ourselves accountable for already. Maybe an idea just no longer excites me. Who knows, in a way, I'm just along for the ride.

This has been a semi-compelled semi-pursued disposition shift. I'm so rarely a passenger. I plugged myself into a system that forces you to be one by design. I'm not trying to be deliberately ignorant or short about competence hierarchies or the fact I made it through school, but I tried incredibly hard to buck the trend of conforming to a narrative befitting my on-paper statistics or description. Those two things, the rigid and disingenuous structure of the State and my fairly unpredictable and excitable disposition, are still at odds, but maybe not violently so. I don't know if I feel particularly good about that, or if I've just found a psychologically protective hole to exist in until I can revolt and burn shit down.

I've got help. More importantly, I've got the kind of help I described several hundred blogs ago. I've got self-motivated, reflective, and accountable help who plugs holes in my knowledge and creates and pursues on her own behalf. It's pretty indescribable what can happen when you have help, so for me it's just going to look like a series of landscaping tasks for a while until the whole operation kind of speaks for itself.

I don't know man. I want a perpetual calm. We were talking the other day, and I said I still have strong images of people I've considered “cool,” and would think a ton about how to be like them when I was younger. Anymore, “cool” has transformed into a more measured approach towards what I think genuinely “nice” people might be like like a handful of athletes or celebrities that I jive with. Or maybe I just want to be “enthusiastic” towards something that isn't predicated on simple self-satisfaction.

I'm losing the thread though, like I said, I didn't think there was really anything on my mind.

[843] The Only Way

The broad theme of this is communication. I'm going to try to not shoot too high in how I connect the scattered lines I'm hung up on. The major question is whether or not there is a right way to do something.

We make the argument, often enough, that there is only one way. Implicitly for most things, but explicitly when the danger is more immediate. You are silent in a theater. There's a correct and incorrect side of the road. Jesus.

The deliberateness or explicitness of the task is a dependent variable. It depends on the abstract frame you use to decode the world. If you have nowhere to be except to “transport” yourself, you may walk, ride a bike, be carried, send yourself through the mail, or take mushrooms, and the goal - transportation - is achieved.

This very blog has the goal of quieting my mind as its largest abstract framework. I define what “quiet mind” is. The next layer down is the careful word choices that hopefully you can digest. Together we might frame and conclude if anything has been translated. I hope you can identify your frames and see how they bump into others. I hope to provide resolution to how you and I orient ourselves and decide on goals.

I want “security.” A knee-jerk fear-based response might mean buying a weapon. This boxes “security” into the two hero-story scenarios everyone defaults to when they pretend they are a “good guy with a gun.” A model U.N. participant might regard stabilizing an entire region of the planet as the just and proper means of attaining “security.”

We know the ambiguity in communication so well that we tend to disregard the perpetual pain and consequences of misaligned meaning as “normal.” We settle for “different ways to skin a cat” sentiments instead of digging. We beg to be understood for what was “plainly said” with “common sense” and plead with people to tell us “what you really mean!”

I find business books constantly alluding to psychological studies on why your pitch or good idea doesn't resonate with a big boss's lizard brain. Relationship and self-help books prompt you to define your personality and style to categorize and depersonalize what your frustrated partner might have regarded for years as, “That's just Bill!”

Politically we bicker beyond the point of feeling sick about the ways to “defend the country,” and very often decide there are “sides” that cannot be resolved, somehow both perfectly reasonable, moral, and with their own kind of “rationality.” The consequences, often excessively felt by those hardly represented, serve less to teach something we later correct for than to punish those we disingenuously regard as “merely disagree with.”

As with most positions I try to take, the idea is not to bemoan the very circumstances of life to make some fatalistic throwaway comment. Yes, you can be right and wrong across many dimensions or layers of focus. Yes, we're always seemingly in some form of contradictory position. No less, I think there is a right way to do things, and a wrong way to do things, at the most abstract levels I can imagine. Specific is easy. Right side of the road, or crash. Eat, or starve.

Abstract is whether you should drive at all. This is a broad historical story predicated on the ethics, ignorance, and selection pressures at the start of the combustion engine era. There were angry environmentalists in those days, but it could be easy enough argued that the prosperity from working in a car manufacturing factory at that time, contributing to the boom and technological development of vehicles, and being an earnest part of modern society outweighed the impact of the pollution.

Can you be right about this issue? Immediately, the impulse is to cite individual justifications and get defensive. “How else can I get grandma to the hospital!?” The effort to lose the point makes itself known. I ask myself, if I were offered another means, a sustainable and reliable means to stop driving grandma to the hospital, would I take it? Yes, that's the right way.

This is a huge hurdle. The way we do things, talk about things, and orient ourselves in the world is our entire world. It works, for better or worse, in “maintaining life” as miserably as we conceive of it in any moment. What are you introducing that's more reliable than my car? What problems does it bring? Where's your proof it works as well? While we lose ourselves to the details and fight, poor grandma is left with all the time she has left to contemplate if, in the abstract, she was really the kind of person who should have had children.

Individually, we don't spend a lot of time attempting to frame things for other people unless maybe we're a parent or supervisor (and even then who knows). The trend of recent human history is to cultivate individual frames and feedback loops. Without ever thinking about the consequences of doing so, we start to regard this as the correct mode of interacting and obtaining information. After all, “information obtainment” and or “being entertained” are ends unto themselves, right? What's being communicated doesn't matter as much as that it exists at all. Thus, naturally, it follows we should compete as entertainment or for other resources.

I think this is a wrong way to be human.

Humans are conscious. Consciousness is awareness. “Awareness” is abstract. How to be “abstractly aware” the “right” way? This is the junction where people default to prescribed religious doctrines or a hodgepodge of mangled philosophy with “ist” and “ism” monikers doing the work of lived experience.

Claims of awareness abound. Pastors are aware of what God said to them. Environmentalists are aware of the impact of fossil fuels. Situational awareness is bestowed to the most paranoid or trained. Reliably though, we find ourselves only just-so aware and often tricked by those who understand the underlying forces at play. We'll be able to fool people with the monkey dancing between people passing a basketball video indefinitely.

It already feels impossible to be aware correctly, no? Even the phrasing feels weird.

This is where the humanity comes in. You qualify with acts. Immediately, your awareness coalesces around specific acts. You can arrest other's attention. If and when you become aware of something, you can choose to act in service to your understanding, or lack thereof.

We're about to get in trouble. What do you know? What kind of understanding doesn't beget a feedback loop of isolated self-satisfaction and justification? For before you can get to whether or not you are behaving in the “right” way, you have to find the impulse for truth and honesty.

Uh oh, I did it again, didn't I? I offered two exceptionally boundless words that we routinely treat with every possible interpretation as bedrocks. I didn't put them in quotes, though. I think they exist as far as you can throw them, sure, in varying degrees of focus and relevance, but also as an indomitable consistent base in each of our hearts. Absolutely none of my indignant posture towards other people makes sense without this broad abstract assumption I lay across everyone.

The thing is, I don't know what it is to be human if I ignore that impulse in myself. When I lie, it's disorienting. It's in service to something impersonal, primal, and probably reactively and unduly destructive. If I approach all of our interactions like you're perfectly understood and honestly relaying your experience, I betray the lies in you that I recognize in myself.

Practically, this means I occupy two very different conversational, social, and emotional worlds, and from the outside, they're impossible to differentiate.

You don't have to believe when I write that I'm being as honest as I can muster. If a part of you knows that I am, and you refuse to believe that, we're occupying different plains and I find it impossible to conceive of you as “doing human right.” This is not the same thing as struggling to contend with conflicting information or holding two competing ideas in your head at once. This is about whether or not I have the capacity to speak to, and you have the capacity to hear and recognize, whatever it is at bottom that connects us. I'd like to call it a science without cheapening science.

So you make the decision to be honest and tell the truth. First, impossible, hurdle and footing is done.
Next, you start denoting what you're aware of and stating where you exist relative to it.
Last, you act to change your relative place or in service to consequences the study or science of your experience can reliably predict.

This is doing human correctly and being aware in the right way.

When you hear an “intellectual” tout a series of catch-alls and vagaries that tangibly and reliably beget death and destruction, don’t get lost in their weeds, as they deliberately lead with lies. They pick untruths. You have to believe this about people, just like you can believe it about yourself when presented with the magnitude of your mistakes all at once.

People will deliberately choose death before they will choose honesty. They will do this because a life suffering the consequences of the reality of their decisions would be worse than death. Ironically, they only know this because their bottom-line communication science that understands blogs like this tells them so.

The problem, as our coronavirus times can no doubt attest, is that their choice to die in service to their demons, when scaled up, kills us all.

Thus, you need to return to the exercise. Is it honestly hard to believe people are willing to die and kill those around them, so recklessly, as you consider our violent past or watch them do so every day? Are you allowing yourself to be corrupted, in so many ways, by sympathies and physical or emotional burdens that have entangled themselves to those who are going to get you killed? Can you move in a way that maximizes your chance to survive?

Only once you frame the game and its different layers can you play it. If you're unwilling to do so, it's hard to consider you human. If you're unable to do so, you're likely the kind of person that needs protecting. If you're unable to find protection, you'll be the first to die. Maybe you don't care about who dies, but then again, I reflexively call you inhuman and a liar.

[842] Would You, Could You, Be My

I'm so small.

For reasons I can't define, today has maintained a theme. The theme was “neighbors.” I move to the middle of nowhere, already exists a neighbor. I stay for a year or two, several more move in. You've been told to “love thy neighbor.” Depending on which side of the fence you sit, you might be the Ned Flanders, or the Homer Simpson.

What does it mean for me to call myself small? I'm a distant memory in the mind of a college acquaintance. I'm a petty fool with indignant statuses to be written off as though they were inscribed on toilet paper. I'm 1 in several billion who may or may not die in some horrifying way tomorrow or lend himself to the infectious chain that takes down someone else. I'm the conscious blip, delirious with ideas of free will, taking infinitely ironic stabs at immortality with every new goal and mangled sentiment.

The smallest speck of dirt in your eye can irritate indefinitely. The smallest bump on your skin can engorge and get infected. The smallest comment of encouragement or scorn can imprint on one who overhears. I'll watch 6 seasons of a show and replay one scene or one line for years. What does it mean to be small? It's an opportunity to persist and move in many directions. Tardigrades can live basically everywhere, including in the vacuum of space.

I am small. I don't feel small. In fact, I feel like I have an over-sized impact on the lives of people I interact with. I feel people remember me, especially when they don't want to. I think how trashy reality television is perceived by me is how people hate-fuck ideas about and from me in their own lives.

All the world's entertainment and horrible examples of how to conduct your life haunt, taunt, and flaunt how much attention and money their branding and berating can garner. The language to escape and justify is an inexhaustible well. I think I share in the egomania which for surely nefarious reasons is compelling by default. Insofar as you aren't interested in yourself, that is. Crazy tiger people, like burnt Jersey trash, mean nothing to fellow egoists.

For the power and purpose of my self-delusions, what's the end, or even the current goal? Why do I practically salivate at the prospect of opening my social circle to people I know want nothing to do with me? Why do I want 100 invitations, gas or flights paid, to be turned down by those who never signed on? Why do I want to reduce myself to an annoying little stain on the mind of people who know I look down on them and resent for not manifesting beyond formative memories described by some smug Oprah's book club blurb advocating for everyone you meet to be a brick in your humble-bragging home about where you're at in life?

Do I need to always be in that opposition space? Do I need to keep jettisoning myself away from the “past” and carry on as if the future won't be the reshuffling reanimated corpse with different players? Do I turn off, genuinely enjoy doing nothing more than trying to have everything at that point? Do I wish the speck of dirt memory to matter to them as much as their, seemingly positive, impression left on me? Am I just in the business of turning a lot of shit into a much happier and hopeful story than could ever exist?

I suppose, I know what happens when I act like that's true. I know who I turn into. I know the impact of my words and behavior significantly faster and with more credible blame. My impact doesn't come with a butterfly-effect convolution meandering the winds of meaning. I know I don't feel right, or think something akin to karma is going to “get me.”

I like to minimize. I don't wish to erase, but I like to keep in context. I like to find the hundredth iteration or true nascent point to a sentiment that made you feel light and bright all day, but is basic as hell. I want to find the utility or point. I want you to use your anger, or disregard it. I want you to contemplate and build on your trauma, or just be quiet and suffer irresponsibly until we're forced to deal with you. I want to fluidly believe each step of my life is a “simple” act of putting the right shapes in the right holes, and not unleash a torrent of half-baked philosophy, anxiety, and tattered hatred imploring to be understood. I try to not feel my hands and wrists as I contemplate countless redundant incidents of manual slavery that belay the comforts of my existence.

Little can be understood. Little fits in many baskets. Big is open to endless interpretation and remixing. Little can pop right out of existence the moment you try to get too hard a grasp of it. Little decisions you make early about who you want to be and how you're going to understand the world compound. The little idea remains the same, and all you can't control is what spins out. Little acts to remind yourself of who you are and how you're oriented keep you true. Little negotiations in your foundation invite cracks. Little plays to ignorance incite death.

I'm a small collection of ideas in a small state on a small spot of land. I make small amounts of money which let me buy up the small tools it takes to dig small holes, walk small paths, and dream for ever more small comforts. I wouldn't invite my Confederate and Trump flag waving neighbors, and yet, they've carried out small favors and offered to help me in my small endeavors. How big of them.

If “the universe,” what have you, ever had a reason to slow me down, it would be for the same fear that my worst impulses would take over with the right momentum and influence. I'm different. It's a small difference that has compounded over time into something beyond me. It can get bigger and wily. I want the world filled with people better than me, better than having been crafted by the selfishness and indulgence, and better than begging for death amidst abundance. I pursue a future I can't conceive as the last interesting story to unfold. I don't want to shed the characteristics that make me small. I want to recognize and respect what they turn into unchecked or ignored.

I make small decisions over time until something big exists as order or chaos. I watch my creations as though they had been there all along or were inevitable. I see what work is left to be done, move a stone, dig a hole, and huff a new engine fume. I keep inviting. I keep celebrating. I keep posting the world's weakest landscaping pictures of the inches we add. I watch my language evolve into more “we” sentiments. I wonder what we will resolve to as the world continues to burn. I wonder if when I've crossed over some superficial mental or cultivated environmental line I'll forget about what drove me there. We'll have so much left to do and think about.

[841] Game - Set - Hatch

I don't know about you guys, but I'm having a wonderful time.

Yes, in spite of my many years of complaints, things going on lock down, and general wave of fascism and ineptitude killing many things, I'm on a bit of a high. It's not manic, it's not a swell in my chest of deep appreciation or joy, and it's not the kind of schadenfreude you might expect from someone as spiteful and riddled with hatred as me.

I'm happy because reality is creeping in. Once you get past boredom, you're forced to stare at the nakedness of your state. Once the virus reaches your door, you're forced to look death in the face. Once you're hungry, can find no place for recourse but the increasing fear and violence from your neighbors, you're provoked to act, even reflexively, as if there's something deeper motivating your survival that's been ignored.

At bottom, we're a confusing set of contradictions, if only at least verbally. We want to save the planet while maintaining the edifices that give us wasteful and destructive things. We want to "love our neighbor," but mostly as long as it is in the form of a Facebook like for the guy who's going to be delivering them groceries. We believe in equality when we perceive an injustice is being done to us or an entertaining Netflix documentary highlights the plight of poverty and generational neglect.

The day-to-day vocalizing and struggling with life's circumstances are expressly avoided, distracted, or denied. As such, being a person who prides himself on trying to vocalize "at bottom," I find myself in perpetual opposition to what I might describe the "insinuated or seemed life." There's a form of communication that is perpetual dog whistles of different pitches. There's politicking and passive aggression. I, almost always, stay silent or just call you a cunt.

So what does a cocky cunt like myself afford himself with this access to what may crudely be deemed a better approximation of "truth?" In a crisis, I have affordable land and the ability to grow food on it. I have solar panels, so even if I had to dramatically scale back my energy usage, I could stay warm or filter water. I have a calm and deliberate disposition when faced with change. I accepted things were hard a long time ago and picked to sacrifice the appropriate things to be better when times got tough.

This kind of stuff makes me mildly smug, but also resoundingly hopeless. I gave my group of friends credit they didn't deserve, because I thought we all understood the times we were living in and what was coming. I thought we all could decode the implied language, and translate it into being deliberate and accountable for all of the pitfalls and failures we were expected to deal with. I thought we could look at our funny, pretty, intelligent selves and cut out a place to be together.

What I'm increasingly learning about society, or the human animal in general, is that it does not give itself the credit that I wish to. My friends don't believe in themselves like I do. They don't believe what they are capable of. They don't trust when I admire them. They don't believe they can change literally the entire world to meet their ends. You still can. I'm still working to.

Yesterday, I was in a conversation about the harsh words I have when I see a certain kind of "fat bitch" or just ridiculously clothes or haired person that just gives you pause. I put little stock in my sentiments. The superficial cutting people down is as weak or strong as you want to make it. It was making my conversational partner uncomfortable that I might be derisive of the idea that "really pretty" people might have the same shit to talk about me.

What's key in our conversation is the discussion that spun from it about creating your own reality. If I got ripped over the next few months and was still regarded as less attractive than Brad Pitt, it doesn't matter. I'm no thirstier for anymore eye-fucks than he might be. I don't regard attractiveness as a qualitative measure on which to judge someone. I've never needed to be ripped to be a whore, and I struggle to understand the person who would tear themselves or my partners down for their looks to try and humble me. Attractiveness can be accounted for scientifically, but the psychology of what's attractive is significantly more complex and nuanced. Take over the mind, and the body follows.

We construct reality, and to parts of the brain, dream-like scenarios don't differ from being awake. This necessary construction of being conscious does not negate the reality of viruses or math, but it does leave a gaping hole at the center of how we're to understand ourselves and place among others. The reality you construct can be a series of choices informed and encouraged by the facts so-discerned so far, or it can be a painful contradiction that manifests as continued problems impeding your movement through the world. If I thought I was "so hot" that it prompted me to approach everyone "under" me with derogatory comments or an inability to engage them with respect, we'd have a major problem. My meager concept of them would Trump my capacity as a human to empathize or act better.

The psychology of the realities you can inhabit is up for grabs. It's not a single choice in the moment of intense feeling, but a series of decisions over time that embed themselves into your core and mold your instincts. There are a great many misconceptions I've been under that I trained myself out of, and it enabled my ability to navigate the world with a degree of confidence that might seem harsh, naive, or needlessly scrutinizing, but is the giant Band-Aid covering all of the screaming, crying, or confusion that used to be there.

I don't care if it's a crisis, a bump on the head, or a triggering line after years of reading and contemplation, I want as much or more for you as I want for myself. I understand that as perpetually working and reminding myself how and why it can actually work. I live in spite of the abject failure of the scientifically accounted for math of our collective fuck ups and immaturity. I live in service to what I have accomplished or believe I still can and the people I want to do it for. But first, I chose to do it for myself, blame myself, and see how in some way it was my fault or responsibility all along. My sole recourse in life is the piling on of things I'm responsible for. This doesn't mean you have none, it means it's that much more I'm continuing to expect out of you. The chasm between us will grow or shrink along that understanding.

I hope the time alone, or the brushes with death, are the right kind of exhilarating and opportunity for you as they have been for me.

[840] Corona Made Me Do It

I don't know what to say.

How long have we lived in the 24-hour “news” cycle with everything “the war on” and “breaking” from Justin Bieber entering the country to how so-and-so “slammed” and “eviscerated” so-and-so with their legendary commentary?

How long have we had to study the various eras in how civilizations thrived or fell?

How long have we known that we've lived beyond our means, in selfish isolation, screaming “fuck the world” with all of the jaded wisdom of every teenager?

How tired have we been? How fat have we gotten? How many “School of Life” videos and existential memes have been shared?

How many times has “Get out the vote!” been parroted? How many silent wishes for death upon generations of those not as “with it?”

First, I was indifferent to the coronavirus. Then, I went to Wal-Mart and felt the low key panic of people's shifty eyes and odd choices on what to stock up on. I'm not panic buying, but I wanted to make it a couple weeks for if and when the shit really starts hitting the fan.

Next, I'm a touch curious about 1 out of every 50 articles that pop up about it. The prevailing theme is that we're, obviously, unprepared, defiant, and going to make things incredibly worse before they get better.

Then, I want to exploit the crisis. I email my investment guy. I tell every single person I can find in the office, now is the time to lobby for work-from-home and more money. I'm energized to do a little more land walking and mapping, because space away might cost a premium.

Now, I'm “generally angry,” that for all of the hullabaloo, for all of the cries about how things should go or the ways people are “stepping up” in a crisis, it all feels like bullshit. I subscribed to some “we'll get through this!” groups for central Indiana where pleas to find ways to get food, rent, or even cars towed stream in.

FUCK. ALL. OF. YOU.

As we speak, the neoliberal mess of Joe Biden wins Florida by a landslide. The narrative on Trump's response is morphing from his general perpetual lies to the handful of reactive and scared shitless plays he's making to appease anyone and anything that resemble “the market” or “his base.” The edifice, even while crumbling, is dedicated to the shine. The mouth pieces stoke the fear. The half-truth minute by minute scare pieces flood in. Catch-phrases repeated, finger waving the moral turpitude, and self-promotion acts of solidarity abound.

We've lost even the capacity to recognize it as an act. We used to have location-based relationships, or short and incidental ones. We might've built “professional” verses “personal.” A “brand” was something independent of the things you did in service to making it profitable. Now it's just this all the time everywhere. Wait until you hear someone a little quicker on the take say it or do it first, shop it around. Don't create or plan in service to the genuine betterment of something, “make a statement” and tell people to follow a dead link and flooded, incorrect, phone number.

This is how it ends. Probably not with coronavirus, but with this sheer inability to ever recognize the real again, even as death stares you in the face. Trump is death, and we voted for him. So was Sarah Palin. So were the celebrities and lobbyist narratives and daily capitulations we made in service to keeping our own heads above the shallow waters we were still allowed to swim in.

What kills me, what floors me to no end, is that for all of my constant and perpetual bitching, I've struggled so fucking hard, not to piece together a house or cope with one meaningless waste of my time after another in trying to get a little more of my indulgent American dream. No, I've fought and fought and fought to speak as though there is something better to be doing, and you, me, us were not doing it, and even during a fucking crisis, I can't get the conversation, the plan, or the disposition that can treat this shit LIKE WE ALL KNEW IT WAS FUCKING COMING.

I don't feel like I exaggerate when I claim people long for death. I don't think that the emotional burden of the silence is overstated. I don't think the ho-hum, literal fucking shoulder shrug I got today, is less deadly than the deadliest virus. Our minds are poisoned. Our spirits don't bite. When the panic truly sets in, there won't be enough news outlets to cover it. When the ship really starts taking on water, you're gonna feel hungry, starved, from all the bullshit we've been feeding on. There won't be land to swim to as we cramp up and drown.

When we come out the other side with 2 whole extra days of half-paid sick leave, that's when you kill yourself. Don't do it as you lose your job, run out of Hotpockets, or think too hard about how sick your grandma got after you came back from spring break. Do it when you realize it's never getting better, and you don't even know how it could. Do it because you're already dead, and there's nowhere left to go. The virus seems like it's trying to force the issue, but at least it wants to live.

[839] Come Sail Away

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, and no one who's written less than me should ever start anything like that, but I'm a king.

Yes, I am indeed a king. I have regal hair with the softest curves. I have attire that causes people to call me “sir” and move out of my way. I eat incredibly fancy food from all over the world which I pay a premium for, because I can afford it. People smirk and chuckle at jokes I make, even the less than funny ones. I control the very air of my living quarters. Millions of people conspire to keep me entertained. I'm in considerably better health (indicated by my plump but not obese stature) than those I generally interact with. I'm skilled in different sports, hobbies, and am as learned as the books I complete every few days (which I even have people to read to me). The finest women have, and continue, to throw themselves at me. (Mostly as they drive.)

By all accounts, I've peaked. My realm of one is as good as it ever has been or could be save the grandiose immortality-seeking posture of vast structures built to honor me and the formation of leisure gardens. But rest assured, vast structures are commissioned and various gardens will be populated with the freshest foods and flowers.

Where, then, to go but the grave?

In one of the newer episodes of Cosmos, Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses East Asian sailors who, after populating islands and growing isolated from each other, forming different dialects and words, they all maintained the pronunciation of “sail.” Something moved them into the vast expanse of the ocean, and by way of urging us on, Neil wants us to believe we can traverse the stars. They had their kingdoms, luxuries and problems, but familiar and safe home, but were compelled into the unknown.

I think the psychology of most of the “West,” is that of the self-satisfied king. What ever could be the matter? So much abundance! The idea of there being something better, someone else to consider, or something beyond was lost. The gripes of baby-boomers about people my age not working hard enough when I never knew someone not working multiple jobs or destroying their youth in service to desperately struggle. It wasn't too far before them things like the steam-engine were invented. Our species’ recent history had an actual life-threatening amount of work to try and improve upon in order to shape our decadent conceptions.

We stagnated. We defeated the Nazis (yeah, right). Everyone got a car, a modest dwelling, vacation once a year, and smart enough to know whether or not they wanted to go to college. When the temperature got turned up on the water we were floating in, it was easy enough to ignore it. Cost of living going up? Environment signaling danger? Sick, but not too sick just yet? Slowly, daily, one person's mind at a time went blind to the cost of living each day like a king. Living like someone with no subjects to account for. Living like someone who can't be held to account without violent revolution and a good beheading.

The grip of how you anchor yourself is practically insurmountable. My dad seemed to have a really hard time hearing that our ancestry was more Peruvian than Italian. My dad is someone who takes an incredible amount of pride in my grandparents and how they grew up and what they went through. My dad has read an insane amount of history and things related to his heritage. A “simple” fact displaced his roots. I don't blame him for being upset. I was happy to figure out how my hair is curly and people habitually think I'm mixed or Hispanic (my dad regularly has people speak Spanish to him...)

Where are we currently anchored? I'm 31, which means I occasionally see a friend of mine who has mostly or finally paid off their student loans. They've raised several cats, had half a dozen jobs, a few first marriages, maybe 3 or 5 kids total if I go back and count. The vast majority, and remember, I knew a lot of smart, hot, middle to upper-middle class white kids, are not married, 2 car garage, 2.5 kids, cliché conception of the past. Most are meme generators playing adult-ish cards in service to not being destitute. They've found a balance that lets them do a series of mid-life crisis things, now prepackaged and Grouponed, every couple of months.

Kids? Maybe by accident or if their spouses had them from the previous relationship. Work satisfaction? Hey, at least it's not that guy's amount per hour. What's the future look like? Honestly, in asking myself that question, when trying to adopt the character of my collective conception of what I've watched from my online feeds...I don't know. I drew a blank. My personal conception is the freedom to move away from the increasing number of disasters I think I see coming. It probably has a few hastily built rooms with a dozen quasi-businesses. Hopefully I've roped back in Hatsam and haven't scared away Allie Cat.

 

I've found myself coalescing at work. What does that mean? I'm finding it easier and easier to shine, get cocky about it, and speak with a more demanding and daring tone. It comes out in an email I shouldn't have responded to. It has me making sure you notice I went above and beyond in manipulating the stupid or crazy person into doing what I needed. My “future” in doing something like this is the same as it was for me when I behaved that way in school. Extra shit to do. People giving me that look like they wish they could destroy me, except, dammit, I really did help them with something or actually know what I'm talking about. It would be a safe, prescribed, future dictated by the inadequate expectations and pace of a system that stagnates by design.

While we're all holed up in our homes coming face to face with the immediacy that catastrophe can strike, revel in the opportunity to reflect on what's been stuck that, ironically, can be unleashed with the right compelling force. You have to will your way into the future, attack problems worth your skill and attention, and define the indefinite unknown as something for you to shape. You can get fatter, richer, older and more complacent. You can be a cliché king from a forgettable child's fable of folly and excess. Or, you can mark your era by the continued conscious decisions to behave your way over another. To speak to what you actually want and believe, over what's been handed to you, wilted and wrung dry.

If the bug kills you, what did you leave? Your nice-enough personality? Your impersonal out-of-context Ikea quotes and art on your walls? Was it anything someone coming after you could pick up and take even further? There's a kind of king I wish to be that I'm not yet. I have my solitary kingdom, cut from the wretchedness of circumstances imposed upon me. But I still dream. I still wish to design the mind that makes it hard to stop but for the chance to stare and wonder about all that is or will be.